Carroll, in a public service announcement for the sham Allied Veterans group.

The ground is shifting under the feet of Florida Republicans, as Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll resigns after being questioned in a federal racketeering investigation.

The surprise isn’t that Carroll is resigning, it’s that she’s resigning over this

The Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) was caught short by the news, after more successfully dodging another recent scandal bullet. On the very day former RPOF chief Jim Greer was set to begin trial for funny bookkeeping that would have spilled the beans on almost every Republican politician in Florida, including and especially Sen. Marco Rubio, Greer copped a plea.

But Carroll doesn’t look so lucky. Exhibit A in Gov. Rick Scott’s “big tent” GOP cabinet has had her share of ethics challenges since assuming office as the state’s second in command. The issue of her shifting net worth, which she never seems to have a handle on, has been a recurring problem.

So the surprise isn’t that Carroll is resigning, it’s that she’s resigning over this. The investigation, begun by the Oklahoma attorney general’s office (Florida’s AG, Republican Pam Bondi, needs all her time to try to overturn the Affordable Care Act), already resulted in the jailing of the head of the Jacksonville Police Pension Fund, a guy named Nelson Cuba who until yesterday showed up in photos with the Duval County state’s attorney and Bondi herself. Without handcuffs, I mean. Cuba’s arrest was not linked to his Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) work, but to “personal” dealings with the company and its owners.

The owner of Anadarko, Okla.-based International Internet Technologies was arrested Tuesday in Oklahoma on charges of racketeering. He is accused of making $290 million after supplying illegal gambling software in Florida and claiming the games’ proceeds would benefit Allied Veterans. Oklahoma authorities say the group actually received only 1 percent of the money. Chase Egan Burns, 37, and his wife, 38-year-old Kristin Burns, both face extradition to Florida to face the charges.

Carroll, who had or has, depending on her income disclosures, a consulting firm, introduced legislation that would benefit the gambling outfit slash charity when she served in the state legislature. She withdrew her bill, in true Carroll style, saying that a staffer had introduced it by mistake.

In 2010, Carroll was criticized for introducing legislation to legalize sweepstakes games such as those in cafes operated by Allied Veterans. Then, as in now, Allied Veterans and other internet cafe operators took advantage of a loophole in state law that some say should be closed while other say internet cafes should be legal but regulated.

Carroll later withdrew the proposed law, saying it was filed erroneously and that she wasn’t interested in legalizing internet cafes, the Florida Times-Union reported.

Internet sweepstakes cafes are big business in Florida. Since 2007, as many as 1,000 have popped up across the state, according to industry estimates, raking in $1 billion a year.

The governor’s office didn’t offer much in the way of explanation for Carroll’s abrupt departure.

“Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll consulted for Allied Veterans while serving as a member of the Florida House of Representatives in 2009 and 2010. She was interviewed by Florida Department of Law Enforcement officers Monday regarding her work with the company,” Gov. Rick Scott’s chief of staff, Adam Hollingsworth, said in a statement. “Lt. Gov. Carroll resigned in an effort to keep her former affiliations with the company from distracting from the administration’s important work on behalf of Florida families. She made the right decision for the state and her family.”

So it’s all about the importance of families. All righty then. Gov. Scott himself is not a stranger to the gambling group. He accepted $25,000 from it to help fund his inaugural celebration. Now his office says that money went straight to charity.

Check back for more on the story, which will no doubt pull down a few more Florida Republicans before it’s over. Or, as someone on Twitter put it, “One down, one to go.”

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67%

A new CBS News poll finds that while 55% of Americans disapprove of the way President Trump reacted to the violence by white supremacists in Charlottesville, 67% of Republicans approve of his response.

A new PRRI survey finds that 40% of Americans — including nearly three-quarters of Democrats but just seven percent of Republicans — back impeaching President Trump and removing him from office.

Enumerati

16

ThinkProgress notes that just 16 of 292 Republicans in Congress have released statements that call out Trump directly by name or title for his comments.

Enumerati

3x

Consider this: In the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection there are three times as many statues of Confederate soldiers and politicians as there are statues of black people in the entire Capitol complex, according to records maintained by the Architect of the Capitol, the Washington Post reports

Enumerati

34

Washington Post: PayPal has agreed to removed at least 34 organizations, including Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute, two companies that sell gun accessories explicitly for killing Muslims, as well as all accounts associated with Jason Kessler, the white nationalist blogger who organized the Charlottesville march, according to a list provided to the Post by Color of Change, a racial justice organization seeking to influence corporate decision makers.

Verbatim

“If allowed to continue along this senseless path, Mr. Trump will do lasting harm to American society and to our standing in the world. By his words and his actions, Mr. Trump is putting our national security and our collective futures at grave risk.”

Verbatim

“The white supremacist, KKK, and neo-nazi groups who brought hatred and violence to Charlottesville are now planning a rally in Lexington. Their messages of hate and bigotry are not welcome in Kentucky and should not be welcome anywhere in America. We can have no tolerance for an ideology of racial hatred. There are no good neo-nazis, and those who espouse their views are not supporters of American ideals and freedoms. We all have a responsibility to stand against hate and violence, wherever it raises its evil head.”

— Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who has been publicly silent so far over President Trump’s latest remarks on Charlottesville, “is privately upset” with the president’s handling of the episode, CNN reports.

Verbatim

“I’m sorta glad that them people got hit and I’m glad that girl died. They were a bunch of Communists out there protesting against somebody’s freedom of speech, so it doesn’t bother me that they got hurt at all. … I think we’re going to see more stuff like this happening at white nationalist events.”

— Justin Moore, the Grand Dragon for the Loyal White Knights of Ku Klux Klan, said he was glad that a woman died in Charlottesville when a car drove through a crowd, the Charlotte Observer reports.

Verbatim

“If Trump finally pushes Bannon out of the White House, the nationalist policy project will be all but dead. The new chief of staff, John Kelly, is far more moderate on immigration and has pushed Trump to abandon the idea of a physical border wall. Economic policy will be fully under the control of Cohn, and the heretical idea of raising taxes on the wealthy will have no champion. Trump himself has always been more animated by the xenophobia of Bannonism than by its populist economic views. A Trump White House without Bannon will be no more radical in its coddling of far-right groups—today Trump showed again that he needs no encouragement—but it will be more captured by the traditional small-government agenda of the G.O.P. Bannon hoped to destroy.”

Verbatim

“What is Robert E. Lee known for? This is what I mean by the margins of the debate. Lee is known for one thing: being the key military leader in a violent rebellion against the United States and leading that rebellion to protect slavery. That’s it. Absent his decision to participate in the rebellion he’d be all but unknown to history. He outlived the war by only five years. There’s simply no positive side of the ledger to make it a tough call. The only logic to honoring Lee is to honor treason and treason in the worst possible cause.”